Providing information technology services has become an important part of business activity. Businesses recognize that having high quality information technology services are essential to operating their businesses in a competitive fashion. Various service providing companies compete with each other in formulating bidding for and delivering these services to their own and other companies. It is therefore also essential that these formulating, bidding for, and delivering aspects of the information technology service be carried out with high quality if a service providing company is to be successful in this competitive area.
While quality techniques have been applied in the operation of various businesses, including primarily hardware manufacture, little attention has been directed to quality processes in the service business area. Keane, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,581 describes a product flow monitoring system including quality assurance measures. Turnbull, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,765 describes a method and structure of a product development monitoring system in which the process is divided into stages including quality assurance. Stapleton, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,483 describes a quality assurance feature of an image processing system. Ertel in U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,262 describes a data quality review method and system in the health care environment. Tucker et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,432,218 describe determining quality levels for fabrication and assembly designs of a manufactured product. Motai et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,493 describe forming a quality control instruction table on the basis of a manufacturing drawing of the product. Miyakawa et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,717,598 describe a manufacturability evaluation method to be employed while designing an article.
Unfortunately, none of the above quality systems apply to assuring the quality of solutions in the service industry or more particularly in the information technology service industry.
Information technology services include but are not limited to, selecting and providing workstation hardware, software operating systems and applications, server hardware and software, network and communication hardware and software, installation and maintenance of the above hardware and software, help desk operation, user training and education, on site and remote support, providing personnel and management to perform the above tasks. The services may also include developing, installing and maintaining a custom application for a customer.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, there is defined a new method of assuring the quality of a services solution.
It is believed that such a method would constitute a significant advancement in the art.